15 Akron/Family - Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free

Departing from Michael Gira's Young God label and shedding a member, Akron/Family found themselves on another indie label though with possibly their most commercial/song-based collection to date.

They probably should have followed fellow YG-act Devendra Banhart onto a major label..opener 'Everyone is Guilty' sounded like early-Funkadelic meets Howlin' Rain while 'River' recalled the peaks of They Might Be Giants (..there were some!).

A lot of the experimental/jam-inflected material was dropped or cohesively fused into epics like 'Gravelly Mountains of the Moon' (if Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks had made space rock) and 'MBF' - which grooved like Blue Cheer and Comets on Fire. The end result was probably pitched somewhere between SFA's latest and what the Wilco album should have been like and has the schizoid generic quality that I liked about the Dirty Projectors' album and last year's Luna by The Aliens. Another record certainly deserving of an audience and kind of shocking that such a wonder was pretty much ignored by most..

14 Mastodon - Crack the Skye

I was already partial to a bit of the 'don after the mighty Moby Dick-themed Leviathan and the wild/incomprehensible follow-up Blood Mountain which found them drifting between King Crimson, Metallica, and Queens of the Stone Age (when Oliveri was in the band).

Still, since the last record the 'don have been busy supporting Slayer and being in comas - bizarrely sharpening the formless concepts of the last record into something slightly more coherent. The proggy concept behind Crack the Skye being the following: a central character in a coma learns to astral project and passes through a Hawking-conceptualized wormhole into the past and occupies the bodies of several individuals in Tsarist Russia, most notably the body of Rasputin and something a little like the Moscow-sections of The Master & Margarita.

But beneath the concepts-as-metaphors is some pretty heavy shit - from Brent Hinds coma following a drink and drugs-inflected incident at an awards show to the tragic suicide of drummer Brann Dailor's sister Skye in 1990 that burns into this record. Crack the Skye should probably be listened to in one trip - their promise/threat to play it in full on their upcoming 2010 tour has made me pick up a ticket.

Opener 'Oblivion' is pretty immense stuff, especially when that killer riff kicks in and later when Dailor adds his vocals which are very Layne Staley. Pearl Jam/Springsteen-producer Brendan O'Brien manages to capture Mastodon's epic sound and it feels safe to say that by the time 'Divinations' and 'Quintessence' have blasted from their wormhole, Metallica seem like yesterday's men (I am holding a grudge against Hetfield & co after suffering Some Kind of Monster!). Crack the Skye is possibly their best album so far, though I have a suspicion that the conceptual-prog elements get in the way of mass appeal..

13 Black Lips - 200 Million Thousand

With the Brian Jonestown Massacre a pretty much spent force these days, I'm needing my knowing retro-kicks from other sources - the Lips' fifth album certainly worked for me.

Regardless of their infamous on-stage behaviour (chickens, fireworks, fellatio etc), it was the kind of record that warranted some of that hype that was forthcoming to every Jack White fart this last decade, or a hallowed text such as Is This It. I can't say I've loved a straightforward rock album since either the last Royal Trux LP or the first Weird War record - 200 Million Thousand certainly filled that void.

The overall feel on a song like 'Drugs' was Williamson-era Stooges and the Dolls at their most dysfunctional. 'Starting Over' felt like Richard Hell playing a lost Velvets-song , while 'Let It Grow' sounded like early Jonestown songs did on Tepid Peppermint Wonderland.

Certainly rock, and a great take on rock at its most reductive - why don't people listen to records like this and the last RTX and plump instead for the latest from AC/DC, a band who have been making pretty much the same record since 1980?

12 Om - God is Good

As well as being a bit of a Secret Santa, Steve Albini has produced several albums this year - I found the Manics album a bit lacking in material and more of an e.p. than The Holy Bible II and the Jarvis-record had great production but only about two songs (the initial single, the title track). But Albini recorded two of 2009's highlights - Mono's vast Hymn to the Immortal Wind and this record from the latest incarnation of Om.

The band we know as Om used to comprise 2/3 of the revered stoner legends Sleep, but are now just 1/3 of Sleep plus Grails' Emil Amos. Having witnessed them live last year, Om seemed to take almost an hour to get going, but when they got going..despite being essentially a rhythm section, the music is truly epic and the feel here is closer to recent Grails' releases and the fine album from the Master Musicians of Bukkake.

God is Good is an absolute trip and the point where they intone "Hayya ala saleh from the Minaret sea/Toward solidaric ground weeps, walk on Sadhak/Salute the sun, invocates the first steamed rays/Append the fire rite – Grounds on approach - Essence" has the same Middle Eastern transcendent quality I previously felt on the aforementioned 'Persian Love' or My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.

I also thought of the great TV series The Art of Spain and the Muslim region of al-Andalus which seemed a utopian take on Islam at odds with the more extreme derivations and the related wars occurring in the world today. Heck, even Alan McGee rated this album - God is Good, as with many of my favourite albums of 2009, could only be an album and is the antithesis of the single downloaded track. Meanwhile, when the drums come in..they come in..and Albini's recording of Amos' drums sounds so huge, I'm considering a sacrificial fire with my Led Zep box-set as the tinder..

11 Sunn O))) - Monoliths and Dimensions

Perversely Sunn O))) expanded their sound on their first long-player since 2005's grimm Black One taking their minimal drone/doom base further with a supporting cast including Earth's Dylan Carlson, Mayhem legend Attila Csihar, jazz legend Julian Priester, and Joe Preston in addition to choirs and string sections, in the same year that Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley toured their Grimmrobe Demos (45 mins of the two of them at their most minimal!!).

There's nothing much like Sunn O))) and with this record they went even further than previous records, indicating that the tedious notion that everything's been done is very far from the truth. The four tracks were suitably epic and have to be played at maximum volume for full-effect - Csihar's vocals on 'Agharta' recall Laibach, but this time set to a Floyd-like ambience and the inevitable Sabbath-riff. 'Big Church' is the greatest moment opening with a female medieval choir before the doom riff from hell tears through the piece and that's before the chanting comes in!!

Surprisingly the album concludes with a 16-minute piece that features Earth's Steve Moore and like his Stebmo-project is influenced by and a tribute to Alice Coltrane (it is titled 'Alice' after all!). Monoliths and Dimensions is possibly not a record for everyone and is a record that demands attention - as heavy as mid-70's Miles and like the early work of Earth it can overwhelm and transport the listener elsewhere. Monoliths and Dimensions is quite harsh work, nailing the reduction of a Sabbath-riff from Earth 2 and The Melvins to Dead Can Dance-style vocal work and Dark Magus style intensity. As with the Broadcast & Focus Group mini-album this was a record that created it's own world - possibly not a record you'd play everyday but one with an atmosphere that is all encompassing. Like Sylvian, you do wonder 'Where do they go now?' Monoliths and Dimensions seems to be the ultimate Sunn O))) album, though unlikely to appeal to anyone unfamiliar with their back-catalogue or the realm in which they operate. It's only doom'n'drone..but I like it -

10 Califone - All My Friends Are Funeral Singers

Here's another album that got a nice reception, but in less obvious list-based times might have warranted more coverage and fuss - like Akron/Family's Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free it did a lot more for me than the Wilco album that's garnered a mass more fuss and silly claims of a 'return to their roots after experimental albums' - what..like Sky Blue Sky?.

Opener 'Giving Away the Bride' is similar in construction to Wilco's 'I am Trying to Break Your Heart' though also felt like a David Sylvian record. 'Polish Girls' meanwhile sounds like a lost Guided By Voices song given a more acoustic workout until some Fripptastic guitar comes in at the end. Best of all is 'Bunuel' which possibly sounds how Jay Farrar would if he hung around with Jim O'Rourke - any song about the émigré auteur film director of Belle de Jour and The Exterminating Angel would probably appeal to me. But 'Bunuel' has a killer song at the heart and then an endless blend of circular guitars worthy of The Beatles, alluring harmonies, and a catchy form of desperation. It doesn't go on long enough, but is succeeded by 'Ape-Like' which is a psyched-out hoedown worthy of Akron/Family.

I do hope Califone come to the UK and folk discover this great record or their last one where they offered a brilliant cover of Psychic TV's 'The Orchids.' Note - Some members of Califone were also in Red Red Meat whose Bunny Gets Paid was released in a deluxe edition that is equally worth tracking down..

9 Six Organs of Admittance - Luminous Night

2009 has been a busy year for Ben Chasny who prior to joining Comets on Fire released records as Six Organs of Admittance - Six Organs' albums coming between Comets-releases. First came the comprehensive RTZ-compilation of rare material and then Ethan Miller posted the lost Six Organs-electric album on his Silver Currant Blog and then Luminoius Night which follows The Manifestation, School of the Flower, The Sun Awakens and Shelter from the Ash (as well as two fine Comets' albums, the Empty the Sun book/soundtrack, and a lost solo record and a new LP with title!).

To be fair, Luminous Night probably makes more sense if you've heard the last few albums - a definite concept is apparent as with its predecessor and this feels like the record that people have been describing in relation to the Trembling Bells album I haven't quite got. This is a huge LP, from the Pentangle-meets-post rock opener 'Actaeon's Fall' to 'Anesthesia' where Chasny sounds like..Brett Anderson!!

'Bar-Nasha' meanwhile found Chasny sounding like Michael Gira towards the end of Swans' career/The Angels of Light while 'River of Heaven' was the ultimate raga-exploration, bettering similar releases from Grails, Master Musicians of Bukkake and Om - the closing 'Enemies Before the Light' manages to take everything great about this album and fuse into one song. Luminous Night is spellbinding stuff and probably should be higher in my list. Or perhaps featured in all those other end of year lists - perhaps Chasny should have gone electro or something? If you buy one dark psych-folk raga album this year..

8 Madness - The Liberty of Norton Folgate

Like The Jam and The Kinks, Madness seem to be perceived as a great singles band, which is hardly surprising with so many great singles - though some folk might notice that Madness haven't had that many hit singles the last few decades.

This concept piece which like The Good, The Bad & the Queen was inspired by Peter Ackroyd's fantastic London: The Biography was a long-time coming and despite getting deserved acclaim was overlooked for the Mercury Awards and lost as another Madness greatest hits was released, a remastered/expanded One Step Beyond (& a 33 1/3 book), and was eventually reissued with a DVD-performance.

The album managed to fuse their classic songwriting and the ska-inflections with the melancholic side of Madness evident since 'Grey Day' and 'The Sun and the Rain' - 'Clerkenwell Polka', 'Forever Young', 'On the Town' and 'NW5' were pitched perfectly, while single 'Dust Devil' was perkier stuff and appeared to centre on lady's self-pleasure.

Best of all was the epic Michael Nyman/Penguin Café Orchestra-style opening from the overture into the melancholic celebration (or celebration of melancholy?) that is 'We Are London.'

The only bad thing about it was the review in The Word which made simplistic connections between Parklife and Mike Leigh etc - a case of music criticism not fit enough for the product..Weirdly this felt like Madness' 'Greatest Hits' - though all the songs were new. An argument for a record recorded over a few years, perfectly arranged and produced by the band/Langer & Winstanley and with a cohesive theme. I was rather pleased that they played six of these tracks on their recent Xmas tour, the Liberty-material doing much more for me than the songs we've already heard too many times or shockers like 'Wings of a Dove.' It's not very often a band who have been going this long are able to deliver surprises - a Village Green Preservation Society for the noughties at the very least..

7 Raekwon - Only Built 4 Cuban Linx II

While I'm not so sure about the whole sequel albums thing, which makes me shudder at the thought of Bat Out of Hell 2 or Tubular Bells 3, it's something very apparent in the realm of rap where Jay Z appears to be releasing a new Blueprint on a regular basis.

It should be pointed out that the original Only Built 4 Cuban Linx was one of the Wu-Tang peaks of their early years, possibly only bettered by Genius/GZA's Liquid Swords - so a very hard record to live up to. The backdrop to the album hasn't been that great either, the album appears to have been in development since 2005 and gone through many producers, as well as the infamous fallings' out in camp Wu-Tang, partly led by Raekwon's criticism of 8 Diagrams and inter-band gripes over credit and royalties.

There have been fairly well reasoned gripes that the Wu-Tang Clanners' solo works have been lacking after the initial rush of releases in the mid-1990's, the demise of Ol' Dirty Bastard, the film work of the RZA, and Method Man's illness and acting work have all perhaps got in the way. The one exception has been Ghostface Killah, whose work the last decade has included such classics as Fishscale and Supreme Clientele and who makes a great guest contribution here, returning as Tony Starks as he did on the original record.

As with Fishscale, Linx II fuses lethal and literate raps with intense beats and samples that make me think of stuff like Suicide and Throbbing Gristle. It's amazing that a record that took so long and featured several producers – the RZA, Marley Marl, Pete Rock, Dr Dre, J Dilla, Scram Jones etc - and so many guests - the RZA (again), Method Man, Ghostface, the GZA, Busta Rhymes, Masta Killa, Inspectah Deck, Cappadonna, Slick Rick etc, can sound this coherent. It's also very pleasing to hear samples from The Killer and the return of Blue Raspberry on soulful vocals - connecting to the original Linx. The standouts for me remain 'House of the Flying Daggers' where the late J Dilla made the kind of track the Wu-Tang Clan should have last time around and 'New Wu', where the RZA achieves the same as Rae, Ghost, and the Method Man blast off around each other. Here's hoping the Clan make another record and it takes its cue from Fishscale and this album - though maybe Liquid Swords 2 would be a great idea? Oh, and props to Ghost's uber-offensive jism-blow-j themed rap on 'Gihad', which has to be the most offensive rap this side of ODB's Nigga Please . Bring on the New Wu indeed..

6 Luke Haines - 21st Century Man

Following hilarious memoir Bad Vibes and the reformation of Black Box Recorder, Haines delivered his first album in three years - and as with the rest of the back-catalogue, it was great. 21st Century Man was Haines' most rock release since the Albini-recorded double whammy of After Murder Park and Back With the Killer Again.

The constant lyrical themes of the dreaded 1970's evident in most Haines work the last decade or so are in thrall here - 'Peter Hammill' and 'Wot a Rotter' were examples of potent glam-inflected rock (the latter sounding very much like the almost forgotten 70's obsessed Denim while the drum roll on the former appears to be a knowing reference to Suede's 'Metal Mickey').

It's kind of tragic Haines' is lost on an indie and celebrated by a knowing few - comparisons to Ray Davies are possibly fair, though where Davies was often pigeonholed as a singles act with The Kinks, Haines is seen as peaking at different points with New Wave and The Facts of Life (the latter coming high in end of year polls at the start of the decade and forgotten in the lists produced now!).

The chap is kind of a national treasure with more funny lines than Mark E Smith and Morrissey combined. I'm hoping his next work will be the long-awaited Black Box Recorder IV, a band needed more than ever in these times. 21st Century Man is a reminder of one of the great British songwriters, especially a self-aware one he reminds us early on: "I'm too clever for my own damn good.."

5 Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest

Already this album is turning up in the fairly tedious "Best of the Decade"-lists that magazines and newspapers are lazily trotting out, but it is hard to disagree. Clearly a band at the top of their game playing together wonderfully - Chris Taylor producing/arranging and the blend of Daniel Rossen's dark/Arthur Lee-style songs with Ed Droste's material that reminds me of Associates' Billy Mackenzie.

So many classics - single 'Two Weeks', the glam-inflected 'While You Wait for the Others', closing ballad 'Foreground', the epic 'Fine for Now' (the song Ride should have made on Carnival of Light), and the lush 'Dory', a song of two parts that reminds me of both early REM and Robert Wyatt circa-Rock Bottom . All with the attention to detail you'd expect from Van Dyke Parks' work on Smile and Song Cycle..like Dirty Projectors and Parks-collaborator Joanna Newsom, this generation seems very attuned to the lost Beach Boys album and Wilson's collaborator.

Grizzly Bear certainly delivered on the acclaim, though some of that seems to have dissipated towards the end of the year. With side-projects like Department of Eagles and Taylor's Cant, Grizzly Bear are likely to get better at what they do..so I can't wait for Veckatimest's follow-up in a year or so (..but will certainly be attending one of their crop of upcoming 2010 gigs that must be a victory lap).

4 Mos Def - The Ecstatic

I can't say recent assertions that hip hop is dead seem that valid - quite odd when you consider the last few albums from Nas (who declared the genre dead in album form a few years ago) have been rather great as well as the celebrated J.Dilla/MF Doom-output and such usual suspects as Ghostface Killah, Q-Tip and Raekwon. The cream of the crop and an album that transcended a genre, dying or not, was Mos Def's The Ecstatic - 16 tracks of sonic adventure and crystalline lyric engagement. I'm wondering why this isn't # 1, in fact.

Following 1999's acclaimed Black On Both Sides, Mos Def appears to have confounded audience expectation with the blues/rock/experimental climes of The New Danger, while next album True Magic felt deliberately lost. Then again, Mos Def's profile has tended more towards acting it's arguable that he's better known for featuring in films like 16 Blocks and Be Kind Rewind.

Mos Def has become prominent regarding politics in the last decade, events like the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina feeding into the records - several tracks on The Ecstatic feature Middle Eastern samples which make me think of records like Holger Czukay's 'Persian Love' and Eno/Byrne's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. There are relentless beats a-plenty here - though some of it feels like fun such as the dance floor friendly 'Quiet Dog Bite Hard' or the sloppy sounding likes of 'Priority' and 'Revelations' which remind me of Ol' Dirty Bastard before he lost it.

Opener 'Supermagic' has to be the best opening track of 2009, feeling like a strange universe where Jimi Hendrix and Outkast combine - blasting into 'Twilite Speedball' and 'Auditorium', The Ecstatic feels relentless. 'Life in Marvellous Times' blends something like a John Carpenter soundtrack with the electronics of Depeche Mode. Later tracks like 'Pistola' and 'Workers Comp' standout towards the end with pop sensibilities and a dub-inflected take on the genre.

The Ecstatic was undoubtedly the real deal and with Raekwon's sequel to Only Built 4 Cuban Linx provided a generic highlight in 2009. While some rap albums have made me wonder if I'm too old to be listening to this music, or feeling sad at how commercial a lot of it has become and pine for the days of A Tribe Called Quest and Run DMC, The Ecstatic simply sounded like one of the peaks of 2009 and as classic as an album can be. It's here you might want to hear a cliché like "If you buy one hip-hop album this year" - though you should probably invest in Raekwon too..

3 Neko Case - Middle Cyclone

I've long adored the records of red-haired Canadian vixen Neko Case, though after listening to too much alt-country in the late 90's/early 00's I was finding the angular power-pop of Case's work with The New Pornographers preferable to her country-inflected solo material.

Her solo peak for me had been Blacklisted, but Middle Cyclone was an unexpected delight - quite a year for Neko with Marianne Faithful covering 'Hold On, Hold On' from her last album then this record reaching the top 3 in the US album charts - the most unlikely record to reach the Top 3 since the last Modest Mouse album.

Case's songwriting is in great form and with her familiar band and guests including The Band's Garth Hudson, Giant Sand's Howe Gelb, and the inescapable M Ward; Middle Cyclone is a loaded album. There's an eco-theme going on here, most present in opener 'This Tornado Loves You', the charming take on Sparks' 'Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth', the comic 'People Got a Lotta Nerve', and 'I'm An Animal', which fuses Spiritualized-style organ with a suitably epic riff (Case's sassiest song since 'Tightly'). 'The Next Time You Say Forever' sounds like an imaginary collaboration with Johnny Marr, best of all is 'Prison Girls' which sounds like something from a David Lynch movie and around the two-minute mark drifts into the best moaning on a record since Kate Bush's Hounds of Love, like an erotic (rather than sophoric) Mazzy Star.

Middle Cyclone was kind of unexpected and another one of those albums I've been blown away by every time I listen to it - Case's brilliant career goes from strength to strength. Roll on the next album, though shouldn't there be a New Pornographers album sometime soon?

2 Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca

As ever it seems that the best music is coming from America; Dave Longstreth & co are several albums into their career, followed up an appearance on the Dark is the Night collection with David Byrne, left Dead Oceans for Domino and delivered a definite masterpiece. Bitte Orca is a record that I've played all year and a record that seems to reveal more each time I play it - this felt like the move Grizzly Bear made when they became a band with Yellow House.

The approach here is certainly more pop centred than prior releases such as the art approach to covering Black Flag's Damaged that was Rise Above or the barking concept album The Getty Address. The blend of vocals is spellbinding - male vocals pitched between Jeff Buckley and Green Gartside are set against the enchanting vocals of Amber Coffman and Angel Deradoorian (whose own Mind Raft e.p. was a highlight of 2009 - would love to hear a long-player from her as great as that).

Strange experimental riffs and drums, verging on Zep on 'The Bride' are set against the Graceland/Rei Momo -thing that Vampire Weekend failed at on their debut. The heart of the album remains the double whammy of 'Stillness is the Move' and 'Two Doves' - the former was a killer single that was number one in a parallel universe and seemed to approach Timbaland's early productions via alternative music, the latter was even better and seems one of the most sublime songs I've heard, a lost This Mortal Coil song maybe, or that feeling I recall from The Sundays' one slice of genius, 'Can't Be Sure.' Though lately I've become almost as enamoured with the epic 'Useful Chamber' which again reminds of Timbaland's production peaks and of Vampire Weekend. Bitte Orca is from a strange place and makes me think of Van Dyke Parks' Song Cycle, Scritti Politti's Songs to Remember (plus parts of Cupid & Psyche '85), and Jim O'Rourke's Eureka - like those records it's a very knowing take on pop that some might consider smart-arse.

The next time someone whines about how bad contemporary music is, please strap them down and play this one..Bitte Orca certainly met the acclaim heaped on it by critics the world over and was one of the few times where I wasn't disappointed and felt the gulf between the reviews and the actual record. If anything the acclaim felt like an understatement..

1 David Sylvian - Manafon

Last time around David Sylvian was working with brother and fellow Japan-member Steve Jansen with Burnt Friedman, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Stina Nordenstam et al in Nine Horses and delivered Snow Borne Sorrow, his poppiest record in a few decades.

Manafon runs in the opposite direction, a sort of advance and sequel to 2004's fractal Blood on the Tracks that was Blemish. Sylvian croons disembodied black comic lyrics over an improvised, manipulated orchestra including Christian Fennesz, Evan Parker, Keith Rowe, and John Tilbury.

There are moments of beauty - opener 'Small Metal Gods' (apparently written in the 1st person, unlike the rest of the material) and the introduction to 'The Greatest Living Englishman'- but this is countered by an almost Beckettian approach to material. Sylvian's themes include terrorism ('Random Acts of Senseless Violence'), accidents ('Snow White in Appalachia'), and the symbols of poets and the artist ('Emily Dickinson', 'Manafon' - the latter linking to Welsh poet RS Thomas). Manafon out weirds the last few Scott Walker albums, and is a record that seems more beguiling with each listen - I have been a fan for decades and pretty much like any Sylvian record..yet Manafon remains very hard work and sets John Cage's Sonatas and Interludes against experimental jazz, glitch improvisation, a musical approach that reminds me of Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape, semi-classical diversions, and a strict compositional methodology.

As stated above, I'm quite the sucker for anything Sylvian produces and this ticked all the boxes, especially some of the lyrics that advanced on Blemish and the 9/11/War on Terror-reflecting songs like 'Wonderful World', 'World Citizen', and 'Zero Landmine.' It was also great that when Sylvian threatened to return to the mainstream with Nine Horses he shifted in a different direction, hardly relating to his last release, let alone the sound of Japan back in the yore. I have a suspicion that Sylvian certainly won't be participating in one of those reunions that everyone is doing and dusting down Japan.

Meanwhile he carries on regardless, always forwards - which is something very few of his peers from the New Romantic era or the influences often applied to his earlier work (Bowie, Ferry, Reed) seem to do. Strangely, Sylvian is a bit like Julian Cope - a former chart star veering off into whatever avant climes he fancies - though I find Cope too prolific and random these days. It's a long way from 'Life in Tokyo' and 'Quiet Life', though in many ways Manafon continues the minimal, extreme journey that began with Japan's biggest hit 'Ghosts.' Very far from the almost MOR directions of the Sting/world music climes of Dead Bees on a Cake and the pop of Nine Horses, where will Sylvian go next?

Right, in the next week or so (deadlines don't exist in Flashlight world; we're such renegades) we will be launching a weekly e-mail newsletter. This will basically be the usual gubbins, letting you know what we've reviewed and found funny in the last week, what we have coming up, as well as details of competitions. If you would like to sign up, please just send an email with your name and email address to newsletter@flashlightmusic.co.uk - we've said it before but it definitely bears repeating: if you saw most of us trying to work computers you'd believe us when we say we wouldn't know how to do anything untoward with your email address, even if we wanted to..